That sweet monotony.

“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?”

-George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

Henri Baptiste Lebasque, Le Repos sous les arbres

4 thoughts on “That sweet monotony.

  1. I have often thought the same thing remembering my wonderful summers in the country at my aunt’s farm. Then I got caught up in the movement of the coming times where we craved nothing but manic excitement though that inevitably comes with depressed exhaustion and consequences. But now almost everyone is haring after that excitement. Few crave peace and fewer still the peace that passes all understanding.

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